


Two O'Clock in the Morning

by GloriaGilbertPatch



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 06:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2141103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaGilbertPatch/pseuds/GloriaGilbertPatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A response to this Tumblr prompt: I'm in need of a good cry: Danny waits all night at the ESB. Mindy doesn't want to climb the 104 flights of stairs. Angst, but have a happy ending please.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two O'Clock in the Morning

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't know. Seriously, this is a mess.

He couldn’t leave; it had only been an hour. Sure, he’d told Mindy eight o’clock, but when had Mindy ever made it anywhere on time? The fact that she wasn’t there (yet) didn’t mean she wasn’t coming. Mindy loved him. He knew she did, even if she’d never said it, even though she’d told him she wasn’t going to meet him and that she didn’t believe he loved her. She’d be there. It was only nine o’clock.

It was only ten o’clock.

It was only eleven o’clock.

By midnight he was pretty sure his heart had broken, but he’d promised her he’d be there all night. He’d _promised_ her. And, okay, maybe he hadn’t realized at the time that the observation deck closed at two o’clock in the morning, so he couldn’t really stay until the sun rose, but he owed it to his promise to stay until closing. Maybe she’d lost track of time. Maybe one of her patients had had an emergency. Maybe she couldn’t decide what to wear. She did have a lot of clothes.

One o’clock.

She wasn’t coming.

At least it wasn’t freezing with a chance of rain. It was still cold, though, and his whole body still ached to know that he’d never get to hold her again, that he’d had a chance and thrown it away and _it was too late_.

So many times he could’ve gotten it right, and didn’t, and now she didn’t even want to be his friend anymore.

He’d sell his interest in the practice and move away. Back to Staten, maybe, or if he was being honest with himself, just far enough to be off Mindy’s subway line. He couldn’t imagine being far away. Really, he couldn’t imagine never seeing Mindy again; her colorful outfits; her beautiful dark hair; the sunny, toothy grin she only flashed when she was too genuinely happy to remember to keep her lips closed. But he also couldn’t imagine seeing her ever again and not hurting. Hell, thinking about Christina still hurt, even though he’d well and truly closed the book on being in love with Christina, and the idea of not being in love with Mindy was so alien he had no idea what it would even feel like.

At one-thirty, after the last elevator had made its way to the top, Danny quietly headed back down.

He should have said something during these past few weeks, when it was just the two of them and he could have broken it to her gently. He should have told her, that time he tried to kiss her, that it was because he was in love with her, not because he “wanted to.” Hell, he should have kissed her that night they were watching that stupid Lifetime movie – before she had a boyfriend, before she had a date, before she could accuse him of only wanting her when she had someone else. She had been cuddling with him, eating a pizza on his couch – of course he should have kissed her.

No, he should never have broken up with her. He had _had_ her, for those few weeks there – in his arms, in his bed, in his kitchen eating the breakfast he’d made for her. She’d woken him up with kisses and tried and failed to tickle him and shrieked with laughter when he tickled her in retribution – she’d done all the things that girls did in those movies she liked, except even now he could tell that she’d done them earnestly. He’d seen Mindy strike poses and play roles enough times, with enough men, that he knew when she was being The Girlfriend and when she was just being herself. And he’d had her, herself, for his girlfriend and he’d let himself get scared and stupid and throw it away.

And now she was gone, and he’d botched it so badly that even the friendship they’d started to rebuild was dashed to pieces. She didn’t love him. Or worse, she did love him, but not the way he loved her – he could be in the room and her eyes wouldn’t follow him, she wouldn’t break into an involuntary smile when someone mentioned his name – she loved him enough that he had hurt her but not enough that he could make it better.

As he trudged home the full weight of his loneliness threatened to crush him. Danny had long come to terms with the fact that he got lonely pretty often, even with his friends, even knowing they loved him, at least as much as they could. But not a lot of people loved _him_. There was Ma, and there was Richie, and sometimes Stevie. He had thought there was Christina, for awhile, but it was better not even to think of her. And that was it. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault, really; he wasn’t good at letting people in and it was hard to love someone too standoffish to open up. He could deaden the loneliness with sex and dating and hanging out with coworkers in a way that substituted for friendship, but it was always there.

And then there had been Mindy, the only person in Manhattan who could really make him feel not-lonely. When she was around, there was someone who knew him, someone who _saw_ him – someone who really could love him, and for some crazy reason actually did. Having her for a friend had been everything, even before he fell in love with her; it had been a relief like coming inside after a long walk home in the rain, ever time he saw her or called her or even got a text from her. And then he had had her, had her love given not indiscriminately, given not just because she was a giving person, but given to _him_ , because he was special (he was special because she loved him). And for a couple of weeks there he was sure he wasn’t going to be lonely anymore.

Of course he’d ruined it. When had he ever been able to hold onto anything worth having?

He let himself into his apartment and had poured out a tumbler of bourbon before he realized that he was too tired and too heartsick for even liquor to help, that all he wanted was to take off his clothes and get into bed and cry until exhaustion overtook him and he finally fell asleep. He downed the drink anyway, rather than leave it sitting out.

God, how was he going to face her in the morning?

 

 _104 flights of stairs._ Mindy loved Danny, but there was no way in hell she could do it. He’d been her personal trainer, after all; he’d understand. Probably he’d yell at her for pushing herself too far if she even tried. She sighed and turned away. She should probably text him, let him know she wasn’t coming.

_You can have another chance but the elevator is down so don’t wait up there all night for me ok? Just come over instead ;)_

The text immediately came back as undeliverable.

“Damn it, no service,” she mumbled, remembering all the Instagrams she’d had to latergram. She looked wistfully at the elevators, thinking of Danny standing alone at the top, thinking of how good it would feel to rush into his arms, and sighed again. There was no way she could do it. She turned around and headed home.

Maybe it was for the best. He’d broken her heart before, messed with her feelings, tried to pick her up when it was convenient for him and put her down when it got too hard. He’d said he was for real this time, told her he loved her in front of the whole office, even, but honestly, that wasn’t the question. She knew he loved her; she didn’t need to hear it. She didn’t even really need a grand gesture, not when you got down to it. If she was honest with herself he’d always been there when something dramatic happened, when she needed him. What she really needed now wasn’t the hero of a romantic comedy; it was a guy who would be there – just there, because he wanted to be, because she wanted him to be.

And ugh, she had to admit that he’d been that, too.

Well, maybe it was still for the best. He’d stood her up, after all, and it had been freezing cold and raining and she’d stayed up there until two in the morning anyway. This was payback. He _deserved_ to suffer.

But at the end of the day this was Danny Castellano, the love of her life, and she didn’t want him to. She didn’t want to hurt him anymore, even if he did deserve it. (Somewhere in the back of her head she realized she was being very mature suddenly, more mature than she expected of herself, but all she could think about was the way Danny smiled when he was really, truly happy and how she wanted to see that smile every day for the rest of her life.)

Mindy chuckled ruefully when she looked up and realized she was standing in front of Danny’s building. She fumbled in her purse before coming up with the spare key he’d given her when she’d lived next door, and let herself up.

Seriously, once they were officially back together she needed to do something about the horrendous snack situation at his place.

In the meantime she ordered a pizza, took a hot shower, and waited.

Eleven o’clock.

She put the leftover pizza in the fridge and wandered into Danny’s bedroom, a wave of memories hitting her as she did. The last time she’d been here, they’d made out furiously for an hour and a half, until her whole body was tingling and his cock felt like iron. It had been so hard to stop that time, and she knew he’d been hurt even more than frustrated when she insisted. And yet he’d still let her fall asleep in his arms.

She wasn’t going to stop him tonight.

She turned back to the bathroom and dropped her towel, then reconsidered and folded it. They didn’t need to argue tonight about something stupid like folding towels. Then she went back to the bedroom, turned down the covers, and climbed into his bed stark naked to wait for him to come home.

 

Danny washed his glass and put it away, along with the bottle. As much as he wanted to go to sleep, he knew he wouldn’t want to see them in the morning.

Hell, he probably wouldn’t want to see _anything_ in the morning.

No, scratch that, there was one thing he desperately wanted to see in the morning, wanted to see every morning, and that was Mindy, her hair tousled and sleep in her eyes, and he was never going to see that again.

He couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. It was almost a relief to start sobbing. His pillow was going to get a workout tonight.

God, he hated this empty apartment.

He walked into his bedroom, not even bothering to turn the light on as he stripped off his clothes and left them in a defeated pile on the floor. Bed. He needed his bed.

“Danny?”

Great, now he was hearing her voice. This incredibly long, awful day was just getting better.

Except then he saw movement near the headboard, and the lamp went on, and there was Mindy, her hair tousled and sleep in her eyes, and she was smiling at him.

“You waited all night,” she said softly. He looked at her in wonder.

“You didn’t come.”

She shook her head, and he realized her shoulders were bare. Her breasts were bare. His mouth went dry.

“The elevators stopped working. I tried to text you, but there’s no cell reception at the top of the Empire State Building.”

“But you’re here.”

She nodded.

“You’re here…in my apartment.”

“In your bed, if we’re going to be specific.” She smiled again, and he could tell she was tired but there was a hint of lasciviousness in her eyes as she looked at him.

“Yeah. In my bed. Not…in your clothes.”

“They’re dirty. I took a shower.”

“Mindy…”

“Danny,” she said, and the misty, hazy quality was gone from her voice now. “Danny, I love you, and I know you love me. No more messing around, okay? Come to bed.” He couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t move.

“There’s pizza in the fridge, if you’re hungry,” she continued, looking a little nervous now, and he suddenly realized that he’d kind of left her hanging.

“I’m not hungry,” he assured her. “I just…God, Mindy, I was so lonely without you.” Her face broke into another smile, and then she got up and walked over to him and before he knew it she had her arms around him and it had to be a dream because this was _Mindy_ and she was _naked_ and he was holding her.

“I love you,” he whispered into her hair, and she held him tighter. “Thank you. Thank you. I love you.”

“I mean it, Danny. No more messing around. Come to bed.” He nodded, a little bit dazed, as she pulled away, and swallowed hard as he caught sight of her, this beautiful woman whom he loved a little bit too much, this woman who was everything, whom he’d thought he’d lost, who was leading him back to his bed…

God was officially allowed to laugh in his face if he ever asked for anything else.


End file.
